Homework #1 – Basic Terms and Concepts Name:

Intro to the Environment - Eco Footprint - Homework #1 (HW1) – Fall 2012

1. An ecosystem is a community of organisms living in a particular environment and also the physical elements in that given environment, in which these organisms interact. Its diversity is profoundly substantial. An ecosystem can extend from the icy artic zones to the tropical forests. They occur in many different scales with smaller systems pierced inside larger systems. Depending on the scale, an ecosystem can be small or profoundly large.

2. Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants and some other organisms use sunlight to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water. In plants, photosynthesis generally involves the green pigment chlorophyll and generates oxygen as a byproduct.

3. A producer in an ecosystem, converts energy from the environment into carbon bonds. For instance, green plants use energy from the sun to create more complex molecules like carbon dioxide into glucose. Consumers on the other hand are organisms that obtain nutrients from other organisms. They attain their energy from the carbon bonds made by the producers. An example of a consumer is animal that gets its energy from plants. It is also called an herbivore. A few examples of herbivores include cows, moose, gazelles, rabbits and elephants. The trophic level of an organism is where the organism is situated in the food chain. A food chain is similar to a linear sequence where the organism at the bottom is eaten by the other species in the chain but the organism at the top is not eaten by any other species in the chain. A biological magnification is the increase of concentration in a substance such as pollutants, which become concentrated in successive trophic levels. Often, this harms the organisms in which these materials concentrate, since